lean product development Archives

Is a Task a Deliverable?

Tasks (or action items) are a fundamental building block of an ongoing work-effort or project schedule. While we tend to think of completed actions as deliverables, a project schedule can also be considered a project deliverable….and the value of well-written task (within the schedule or otherwise) is often overlooked.

Generally, a task begins with a verb (some action to be performed) to achieve a milestone or outcome to some desired level of completion. (Recall a previous related article where we discussed the “definition of done”.)

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Lessons from Scrum for Product Development Teams

In a previous article, we explored agile product development with a focus on early product validation.

There are additional key enablers from agile/scrum that can be borrowed and applied to any product development process, however.

In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the role & responsibility for scrum masters vs. project managers/core team leaders.

Let’s start with (all) the basic scrum roles:

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Agile Requirements Discovery and Validation

Many companies pursue a product development strategy that provides a product (or service) which meets customer needs sooner (rather than later), and then makes adjustments after the product has been fielded.

Pursuing this approach means accepting the associated risks. What if a critical to quality or critical to reliability characteristic fails to meet customer needs? A product could fail miserably by eliminating important product development work scope and accelerating time-to-market. By the time an adjustment or “pivot” can be made it may be too late, or too costly to correct.

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The Definition of Done

In my previous article, we reviewed the project approval committee, and emphasized approval to start projects and/or approve projects in-process.

With any type of project oversight, presentations or project schedules are often reviewed.

For a more lean project management approach it would help to consider reviewing the actual deliverables, including a mutual understanding of the “definition of done”.

“Definition of done” is the agreed-upon evidence of completion of a process, activity or milestone and usually includes a project deliverable. Some examples of deliverables might include the project plan, project schedule, documents (requirements document, plans, and reports), analysis, and designs (drawings). Other considerations can be built-into “definition of done” including compliance, acceptance/sign-off, exceptions and best practices.

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The Project Approval Committee

A project approval committee can be an effective way to enable business decision-making and ensure projects are successful.

Committees may be known as a project review or steering committee; however, consider the following (proposed) objectives as follows:

Approve new projects (and project resources)
Approve project phase (phase gate) completion
Approve project go-forward plans (including resources)
Cancel projects that no longer make business sense
Prevent rogue/unapproved projects from consuming resources
Direct / redirect projects to complete key tasks or deliverables before moving forward
Enforce project management planning and execution

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Statement of Work Fundamentals

In my last article, we reviewed a proposed Product Life Cycle process, which starts with a “Define” phase. In the “Define” phase, we are defining the project as well as the product.

We previously discussed the ‘technical leg’ of this process with the market analysis, identifying customer needs, product requirements, verification and validation, etc. [Read more…]

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A Proposed Product Life Cycle Process

In my previous article we covered the advantages of a phase and gate structure for new product development. Now we can discuss some proposed phase names for a new product development or product life cycle (PLC) process.

An organization may have an existing PLC process ‘baked-in’ to their culture and process documentation. Accordingly, there’s a wide range of PLC phase names, all of which are likely acceptable and based on solid reasoning.

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Phase and Gate Structure for New Product Development

In previous articles we defined an element of lean as a phase and gate structure for new product development. This assumes a waterfall approach to the project (versus agile product development).

A new product life cycle phase gate structure might entail, for example: “Definition, Concept, Design, Verification, Qualification, Production and End-of-Life”. (Your organization might decide on different phase names.)

There’s an apparent contradiction in using a waterfall project approach and calling it lean project management, however. A goal of any lean process is to work toward ‘single piece’ or continuous flow: agile product development is more like ‘single piece flow’ of information, versus waterfall which is more like ‘batch processing’ of information.

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Lean Project Management for Product Development

My last article covered a scalable model for lean product development depending on the number of projects and technical objectives.

Let’s start with the foundational elements from this model:

Facilitate a lean project
Understand customer needs (requirements validation and/or agile product development)
Maximize customer (product) value (product value estimation)

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A Scalable Model for Lean Product Development

In my previous article we established the lean product development goal statement as:

Develop products that maximize customer value and minimize product cost, in the least amount of time, and at the least amount of product development cost.

We then derived high-level objectives as follows:

Better understand the customer (maximize customer value)
Do the right projects (product, project and portfolio value analysis)
Do projects right (minimize redesigns, waste and rework)
Level load the organization (minimize bottlenecks and resource constraints)
Create and re-use artifacts (standardize and sustain best practices)

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What is Lean Product Development (Part III)

In my previous article, we established some high-level objectives for lean product development as follows:

Better understand the customer (maximize customer value)
Do the right projects (product, project and portfolio value analysis)
Do projects right (minimize waste and rework)
Level load the organization (minimize bottlenecks and resource constraints)
Create and re-use artifacts (standardize and sustain best practices)

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What is Lean Product Development? (Part II)

In my last article the high level goal of lean product development was established as follows:

Develop products that maximize customer value and minimize product cost, in the least amount of time, and at the least amount of product development cost.

Let’s analyze this goal statement and establish some high-level objectives. [Read more…]

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What is Lean Product Development (Part I)?

Lean product development might mean different things to different organizations, but let’s start with the 5 principles of lean manufacturing and see how it can be applied to the product development process. [Read more…]